Creative Writing and History BA (Hons)

Our courses are informed by research and current developments in the discipline and feedback from students, external examiners and employers. Modules do therefore change periodically in the interests of keeping the course relevant and reflecting best practice. The most up-to-date information will be available to you once you have accepted a place and registered for the course. If there are insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, this might not be offered, but we will advise you as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative. 

For more information about teaching, learning and assessment on this course, please see the single honours course pages for Creative Writing BA (Hons) and History BA (Hons).

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest Creative Writing programme specification and History programme specification documents.

Creative Writing aims to nurture your confidence as a writer and to support your development as a critical and skilful analyst of your own and others’ writing. Throughout, you will be immersed in intellectual issues informing the discipline and practices of writing and learn to place your own writing within contexts of published work.

You will develop expertise in commercial practice (writing for magazines, reviewing, scriptwriting, editing) and understanding of publishing and marketing processes alongside working towards your own, creative development. You will work with published writers, professional publishers and editors with a variety of specialisms including poetry, travel writing, writing for the screen, writing fiction, writing for performance, writing for children, feature writing, blogging and copy writing.

Your development and achievements will be assessed by means of a wide variety of writing ‘tasks.’ In your third year, you will undertake a major writing project of your choice, mentored by members of the course team, alongside participating in a range of activity designed to support you to prepare for progression once you have graduated.

History at Worcester is designed to enable you to study the types of history that appeal to you most. Informed by cutting-edge research on key questions of our time, it offers you the opportunity to study the political, cultural and social history of Britain, Europe and the wider world from the 16th to 20th centuries.

The course begins with a broad introduction to many of today’s debates surrounding history and approaches to historical study. It ends with the opportunity for you to produce a major piece of work on a topic of your choice, supported by one-to-one supervision.

History provides you with opportunities to benefit directly from your lecturers’ cutting-edge research and research interests – which include, amongst many others, the Devil in Tudor and Stuart England, US propaganda in the Second World War, appeasement, the transatlantic slave trade and the home front in World Wars 1 and 2.

Both subject areas are committed to supporting your understanding of the range of possibilities that could be available to you on graduation. You can undertake work placements as part of your formal study and explore opportunities for postgraduate study. There are sometimes ‘earn as you learn’ opportunities to work with staff, and courses regularly advertise volunteering opportunities to work with local organisations.

You can also investigate, with those who are already following them, career paths in:

• teaching
• the creative and cultural industries
• heritage
• the media
• marketing and PR
• research
• and the many other employment sectors and fields in which history and writing graduates find work

Meet the team

You will be taught by a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course.

The Creative writing aspect of this joint honours degree will provide a foundation for students who are interested in developing writing as a profession, for example in the creative industries and/or commercial markets and an understanding of how writers make a living.

Graduates from this course will be very successful candidates for careers in teaching because of the emphasis on writing in the new English curricula. Graduates may equally go on to work in sectors such as publishing, the media, marketing and communications. The course also provides an excellent basis for further study or for self-employment as a freelance writer.

History joint honours graduates from Worcester have progressed in recent years to take up work in a variety of career sectors, including teaching, accountancy, law, the media industries, local government, the police, retailing, administration, marketing, management and university lecturing and research.

A growing number of our graduates progress to postgraduate research in history, both at the University of Worcester and at other universities. Thus, History remains an attractive and personally satisfying degree to study, with a strong track record of supporting graduate employability in a range of professional, managerial, administrative and media-related careers.